BIB_ID
416965
Accession number
MA 2204.25
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1808 April 14.
Credit line
Purchased from James Richard Scarlett, 8th Baron Abinger, 1962.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 23.4 x 19.3 cm
Notes
Coleridge lists the date of writing at the start of the letter as "Thursday Night, 14 April." It has been endorsed "15 April 1808" just above this date.
No place of writing is given, but based on the contents and the postmark, the letter must have been written in London. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
At the top of the letter, Coleridge has written: "Be pleased to admit Mr Godwin to my Lectures - S.T. Coleridge."
This collection, MA 2204, is comprised of 41 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Godwin, written between 1800 and 1823. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 2204.1-41).
Address panel with postmarks: "Mr Godwin / Juvenile Library / Skinner Street / Snow Hill."
No place of writing is given, but based on the contents and the postmark, the letter must have been written in London. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
At the top of the letter, Coleridge has written: "Be pleased to admit Mr Godwin to my Lectures - S.T. Coleridge."
This collection, MA 2204, is comprised of 41 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Godwin, written between 1800 and 1823. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 2204.1-41).
Address panel with postmarks: "Mr Godwin / Juvenile Library / Skinner Street / Snow Hill."
Provenance
Purchased, via the London dealer Constance A. Kyrle Fletcher, from James Richard Scarlett, 8th Baron Abinger, in 1962 as a gift of the Fellows.
Summary
Telling Godwin that showing the note at the top of the letter and mentioning his name should gain him admittance to Coleridge's lectures; reassuring Godwin about the decline in his reputation ("which you have strength of mind enough, I know, to distinguish from honorable Fame") and urging him to keep up his spirits; saying that the public's need for novelty will, before long, "create for you a new run - And what Fame shall be your's, or any one's, Posterity alone can realize, tho' the inward mind may foresee;" describing a moment of confusion when Godwin introduced John Philpot Curran to him as "Mr C." and his feelings of respect and deference towards Curran once he learned who he actually was: "But, I trust, he has both sense & kindliness enough not to gauge a man's head & heart at a first Interview;" adding "God bless you! - I only wish, that hundreds, whose Intellects you first awakened and put into action, would but feel as respectfully & friendlily toward you, as I do, who at that time was your Zoilus : & to whom, till I knew you, your name was like that of an Enemy;" writing in a postscript that he re-opened the letter after he had sealed it to add that he would be "highly gratified, if I could meet Mr Curran again, when with greater Sobriety I might compare my notions with his - and in cooler Logic attempt to prove, that a man may despise France (in the intellectual map of the World) without an atom of English Prejudice. -"
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